A striking literary exploration of the effects of political violence as it everberates through the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Guatemalan civil conflict of the 198 0s, and present-day Los Angeles-from award-winning novelist Micheline Aharonian Marcom.

Draining the Sea is the most ambitious and provocative book to date from acclaimed author Micheline Aharonian Marcom. The story unfurls inside the mind of a man who spends his nights driving the streets of Los Angeles, racked by memories and visions of the Guatemalan civil war, and, in particular, of a beautiful young Mayan woman who died violently in it. He was in love with her, but, it seems, may have played a role in her death. He also is very aware of the United States' complicity in the horrors of that conflict, further twisting his anguish. And in his mind, her fate resonates back to his own childhood as the grandson of survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom, herself descended from Armenian Genocide survivors, has always been haunted by the long-term effects of atrocity. In Three Apples Fell from Heaven, she told the tale of the forcible deportation and massacre of Armenians with unsparing directness. In The Daydreaming Boy, she imagined a man living in Beirut who is forced to face the emotional aftermath of his brutal boyhood as an orphan of the genocide. Now, in this darkly lyrical novel, Marcom offers a powerful testament about the far-reaching impact of political violence and lost love.